The TARDIS brings Rose and a comatose Doctor back to London on Christmas
Eve. As Jackie and Mickey help Rose care for the ailing Time Lord, a
recently-launched British space probe attracts the attention of the
warlike Sycorax. Prime Minister Harriet Jones and UNIT staunchly defy the
aliens -- until the Sycorax use blood technology to take control of fully
one-third of the planet's population, threatening the lives of two billion
people unless they are declared masters of the Earth.

Production

The dust had barely settled on the premiere of the first new Doctor
Who season in 16 years when, on March 29th, 2005, BBC Head of Drama
Jane Tranter revealed that the programme would be returning for a second
slate of episodes, to be preceded by Doctor Who's first-ever
Christmas special. This was immediately assigned to executive producer
Russell T Davies, who labelled it The Christmas Invasion. With
the Ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, having informed the production
team by the end of 2004 that he would be leaving Doctor Who after
his inaugural season, Davies was aware that The Christmas
Invasion would be the first full-length adventure for Eccleston's
successor.

In plotting the special, Davies was adamant that the story actually be
set at Christmastime. He wanted a threat on an epic scale to justify the
full one-hour running length he was being accorded, contrasted with the
simple yuletide festivities of Rose Tyler's home. Davies was also eager
to include elements of the first season to reassure viewers discomfited
by the sudden change of lead actor; to this end, he and producer Phil
Collinson quickly secured the services of Penelope Wilton. Wilton had
played MP Harriet Jones in Aliens Of London
/ World War Three, and would now see her character promoted
to Prime Minister.

Russell T Davies considered destroying Big Ben again

Davies briefly considered destroying Big Ben again in The Christmas
Invasion -- as had happened in Harriet's debut story -- but later
decided to depict the monument as being under repair. The adventure's
alien adversaries came to be called the Sycorax, originally the name of
Caliban's mother in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Davies
also included a substantial role for the United Nations Intelligence
Taskforce (UNIT), an organisation which had first appeared in Doctor
Who in 1968's The Invasion and which
had been briefly glimpsed in Aliens Of
London / World War Three. However, because the genuine
United Nations had reacted unfavourably to a UNIT website set up by the
BBC to help promote the first season of Doctor Who, Davies
referred to the Taskforce by their acronym only. Also referenced in the
script were Davies' nephew and niece -- Jonathan and Catherine -- whose
names he gave to the blood-controlled children.

On April 16th, the British press carried the news that David Tennant had
been cast as the new star of Doctor Who. By this time, work was
under way to flesh out the look and demeanour of the Tenth Doctor.
Tennant was in favour of a costume featuring a long coat and many
pockets, and it was felt that his incarnation should have a less
aggressive appearance than Eccleston's Doctor. Costume designer Louise
Page eventually assembled an outfit highlighted by a grey pinstripe
suit; Page also wanted to dress Tennant in Japanese army boots, but the
actor preferred his own plimsolls to give the Doctor a more casual air.
Davies, meanwhile, had written The Christmas Invasion largely
with Eccleston's Doctor in mind -- the idea being that the
characteristics of the Tenth Doctor would emerge more through Tennant's
portrayal than from scripted lines. It was agreed that Tennant would
speak in an English accent rather than his native Scottish brogue, with
a scripted line (later cut in editing) explaining that the new Doctor's
speech patterns were based on Rose's.

As the revived Doctor Who's extremely successful first season
drew to a close, the press was aflutter with rumours that Billie Piper
would be absent from some or all of the second run. These reports were
finally quelled on June 15th, when it was confirmed by the BBC that
Piper would appear as Rose in both The Christmas Invasion and all
of the second season. What was not revealed at this point was that Piper
had informed the production team that she would be departing Doctor
Who once these fourteen episodes were completed, prior to the
already-announced 2006 Christmas special.

The Torchwood concept would be turned into a spinoff
series starring John Barrowman

The first season had been loosely connected by the words “Bad
Wolf”, which had appeared in virtually every episode in some form,
building to the revelation in the finale, The
Parting Of The Ways, that they were a message scattered through
time and space by a vortex-powered Rose Tyler. Davies sought to repeat
the experiment in the new season, and began developing the notion of the
Torchwood Institute, first mentioned in Bad
Wolf. (The name “Torchwood” was actually an anagram
of “Doctor Who”, coined to conceal the identity of footage
from episodes which had not yet been broadcast.) Subsequently, Davies
was asked to turn the Torchwood concept into a spinoff series, to star
John Barrowman as former companion Jack Harkness. Although he did not
anticipate mentions of Torchwood arising as frequently in the second
season as Bad Wolf had in the first, Davies was nonetheless eager to
tease the concept in The Christmas Invasion, and this became a
prominent element of his script.

Filming for The Christmas Invasion began in Newport on July 22nd,
when material which would appear on TV screens (such as Harriet's
address to the nation) was recorded at Tredegar House and Unit Q2, the
dedicated Doctor Who studio space. This was followed by a week in
London. Most of the material to be filmed was set on the Powell estate,
and was captured at either Wallis House in Brentford (July 25th) or
Brandon Estate in Kennington (July 26th, 27th and 29th). The exception
was the 28th, when the Doctor Who team became the first
television drama to be granted permission to film atop the Tower of
London. Recording was enlivened on the last London day by the presence
on-set of Peter Davison, who had played the Fifth Doctor; Davison had
earlier sent well-wishes to Tennant as he embarked on his first
Doctor Who story, as had Fourth Doctor Tom Baker.

Peter Davison and Tom Baker both sent well-wishes to David
Tennant

More sequences on the Tylers' estate were filmed upon the team's return
to Cardiff on August 1st, this time at Loudoun Square in Gabalfa. The
2nd was a studio day, split across the TARDIS set at Unit Q2 and the
Tyler flat, erected at HTV Studio 1 in Culverhouse Cross. Recording at
HTV continued through August 5th. The 8th was divided between scenes
involving the blood-controlled masses ascending fire escapes (actually
Baltic House in Cardiff Bay and the British Gas Building), and those set
at the Christmas market, at The Hayes. For the latter, the Cardiff city
authorities agreed to erect their yuletide decorations, while Howell's
department store once again posed as Henrik's, as it had done in Rose the year before. August 9th was also
spent at The Hayes, as well as Broadstairs Road in Leckwith for more
scenes of the brainwashed Londoners.

August 10th then saw cast and crew shift to Clearwell Caves, near
Coleford in Gloucestershire. Unusually, this site was chosen to
represent the interior of the Sycorax vessel, reflecting Davies' desire
to get away from traditional metallic spacecraft. Work at the caverns
continued until the 13th. Unfortunately, the difficulty of transporting
equipment into and out of Clearwell Caves meant that a planned
motion-capture shot, tracking into the TARDIS console room when the
revived Doctor throws open the doors, had to be abandoned.

One more day at Clearwell Caves was scheduled for August 15th, the same
day that the shots of Mickey in Clancy's Garage were captured at Brian
Cox Motor Engineering in Elwood. On the 16th, the swordfight between the
Doctor and the Sycorax Leader on the wing of the spaceship was performed
at the docks on Barry Island -- the only location Hawes could find which
offered him an unobstructed view of the horizon. The next three days
were spent at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, for scenes in the UNIT
control centre. Davies specified in his script that this was actually
the headquarters of the British Rocket Group, an homage to Nigel
Kneale's pioneering Quatermass serials of the Fifties. Green
screen work then followed at HTV on August 22nd.

Russell T Davies had hoped to depict mind-controlled
humans near the Cairo pyramids and on Sydney Harbour Bridge

Model shooting took place at the BBC Model Unit in London on September
6th and 7th. Inserts of the TARDIS console room were recorded at Unit Q2
on the 8th, while that of the Santa mask rolling on the ground was
performed in the Unit Q2 car park on September 22nd. Tennant filmed the
scene in the TARDIS wardrobe at Newport on October 8th, on a redressed
version of the console room set. Amongst the many costumes seen in this
sequence were a shirt reminiscent of Tennant's starring role in the
Russell T Davies-produced Casanova, and Hogwarts robes, alluding
to his forthcoming appearance in the feature film Harry Potter and
The Goblet Of Fire. Also visible were each of the previous Doctor's
outfits, with the Fourth Doctor's multi-coloured scarf actually
belonging to producer Phil Collinson (for whom it had been specially
knit by his great-aunt). Several other pick-up shots were completed at
Unit Q2 on this day and on November 3rd. The last material recorded for
The Christmas Invasion was the inserts of the newsreaders,
recorded in the C2 News Studio at BBC Broadcasting House in
Llandaff on November 10th.

Originally, Davies had hoped to include scenes of mind-controlled humans
near the pyramids in Cairo and on Sydney Harbour Bridge to emphasise the
fact that the Sycorax were a global threat, but neither could be
realised convincingly and were dropped. The finishing touch was placed
on The Christmas Invasion on November 14th, when composer Murray
Gold recorded the story's incidental music and a new version of his
theme arrangement with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Soon thereafter, a wave of publicity began for The Christmas
Invasion, most notably a specially-created cover of the Radio
Times -- marking the first time in sixteen years that the magazine
had opted to spotlight a single programme on its holiday issue. The
Christmas Invasion was granted a prestigious Christmas Day timeslot,
making it just the second Doctor Who episode broadcast on
December 25th (the other being part seven of The
Daleks' Master Plan in 1965). And Tennant's first full-length
adventure lived up to the hype, as he became just the second Doctor
(after Eccleston) to debut in the Top Ten programmes for the week. For
the Doctor Who production office, it was a very merry Christmas
indeed.